A Night For Mistress Cyan: The BDSM Community Stands Up For One of Our Own

It’s hard to articulate the sudden rush of feeling that hits when someone you care for announces that they have cancer. It feels like the emotional equivalent of nausea; anger, fear, grief, horror, and helplessness churn together in one sickening mass. Sometimes one of those emotions wins out and forces its way to the surface; sometimes you just keep sitting there numb and cold while you try to sort out the news.

You could see that swirl of emotion happening in the BDSM community when Mistress Cyan announced last month that she was going into chemotherapy for cancer of the tonsils. Her roles as the owner of the Sanctuary Studios LAX dungeon and founder of DomCon are really only her most prominent activities in the kink and leather communities. The number of awards and honors that she’s accumulated since 1990, when she first became a professional domina, are far too numerous to list here. As a trans woman, she’s been a great trailblazer and advocate within BDSM, which unfortunately can be as hostile to trans people as mainstream culture.

The one thing that leavened Mistress Cyan’s original announcement is that her doctors also told her that they expected a full recovery. “You will more than likely die of old age in another 20-30 years and not cancer,” they told her, “BUT there are going to be about three really tough months coming up.”

Those three months include not only chemotherapy, but extensive oral surgery. She’s already had 27 teeth extracted to eliminate the risk of infection spreading.

Mistress Cyan has been a friend, a mentor, and a supporter for many of us, and we’re going to be here for her in the months ahead. We hope that you’ll join us in this.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can help support Mistress Cyan get through the next few months emotionally and financially by attending a fundraiser and play party next Saturday, September 26, at her own Sanctuary Studios LAX. The door fee is $20 and all of that goes to Mistress Cyan’s medical expenses. The evening will include:

Stockroom is, of course, donating some of our products to this event. Specifics will be announced during the week.

You can RSVP and invite your friends either at Facebook or Fetlife, depending on your preference.

If you’re not in the L.A. area, or won’t be at party time, friends of Mistress Cyan have also started a crowdfunding drive on GoFundMe. If there’s one thing that can be called positive to come out of this whole thing, it’s to see how many people have stepped forward to help. In only four days, the crowdfunding campaign has raised $3,720 of a target of $6,000. It shouldn’t be hard to push it the rest of the way.

From all of us, thanks very much to Mistress Cyan for her hard work over the past two and a half decades, and we wish Her very good luck in the months ahead.